FRENCH POLITICAL THOUGHT

gestion^ but few students agree to the permanent validity of
this distinction : two conceptions of the State are really involved,
one of which must triumph.

The ultimate issue can scarcely be in doubt. The old con-
ception is really bound up with irresponsible Monarchy. The
sovereignty of a king is a reality, that of the people a fiction,
meaningless save as a denial of autocracy.1 It had, however,
the advantage of being supremely useful to any government
in need of extensive powers, and was therefore cheerfully
handed on by Monarchy to Republic, by Republic to Empire
and by Empire to Republic once more. But its validity depended
on the alleged insecurity of the regime, and this justification is
no longer possible. " Administrative Syndicalism has come,"
as Professor Laski says,2" because there is now no reason to
restrain it. The executive power can no longer make a plea for
its autocratic exercise when the army is no longer a source of
disloyalty and the Church has been reduced to a shadow of
her former influence. The only reason for the retention of the
present system is the power it places in the hands of statesmen,"
particularly, we would add, against the other syndicalist
danger, the organized forces of Socialist and Communist
Labour.

The real fact is that, as M. Paul-Boncour says,3 "The
Revolution has exhausted the consequences of its principles
as far as the political order is concerned; economic questions
are now in the forefront and the task is how to organize a
freedom duly subordinated to economic relations and economic
conditions. This the State cannot do and therefore allows the
exploitation of public power by organized private interests/'4

1 " L'expression ' souverainete nationale' n'a qu'un sens raisonnable—c'est
la negation de la subordination du peuple a toute souverainet£ personnelle "
(Barthelemy, quoted by Leroy, Techniques nouvelles, p. 268).

2 Op. cit.9 p. 346.
8 Op. cit., p. 344.

* Cf. the statement made by one of the magnates of the Comitl des Forges:
"Monsieur, quand des interets atteignent a Tampleur des ndtres, ils se
confondent avec 1'int^r ^t national" (Henry de Jouvenel, Pourquoi je suis
Syndicaliste, p. 59).

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